Archive for February, 2011

Choose a saying, phrase, quotation, poem, nursery rhyme, etc. to work with. Utilizing only visuals (no words). Illustrate your chosen text in Adobe Illustrator. Open your pictographs/ideograms in Photoshop. Using layer blends and opacity, manipulate your illustration to look like it’s been impressed/chiseled into stone or clay. To complete, place your image into InDesign and add the text associated with your illustration.

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This was not my final image, I did have a grey background and some text (the lyrics) on the bottom, but InDesign would not convert to an image WordPress allowed, so here is my Photoshop image, which is going to have to do for the night until I can get InDesign to convert/save for web. This image was sort of tricky to accomplish. It took a while, only because the blending options had to be precise, otherwise the impressions were either too dark, or too light. In the end, it looked pretty great (in my perspective). The pictograph I created are lyrics taken from Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles”. The lyrics in my pictograph are:

Demotic script followed the Ancient Hieroglyphs and preceded Coptic in the northern part of Egypt, nearing the Delta. Hieratic (the other term; differs from Hieroglyphics) was used from 650 BC until 5th Century AD. It developed in lower Egypt around 650 BC.

3. How did Egyptian scribes impress hieroglyphics into the walls of tombs and temples?

Hieroglyphs were impressed in the wet clay using flint, and other materials made from various objects and foods.

4. How did Egyptian scribes write onto papyrus?

Creating a brush from the reeds, the Egyptians dipped the tips in either red ink or black ink (bee’s wax, ocher with gelatin, soot, carbon, flint), they would paint onto the papyrus.

5. Why was the Rosetta Stone an important discovery?

With the Rosetta Stone, Egyptologists were able to decipher the ancient hieroglyphics written on the tablet from Greek and Domestic hieroglyphs.

The earliest form of Cuneiform were made of pictographs, showing a picture for each image, object, person, etc. Then the tablets evolved into some symbols and many lined-shapes, and finally, the Akkadian tablet is all line-based. Each one, when viewed, shows the changes over time, and how exceedingly different each form of Cuneiform each one is.

Questions:

1. What is a nomadic civilization?

A nomadic civilization does not stay in one area for extended periods of time. The civilizations travel from place to place with everything they own and use.

2. Why did the Sumerians create a visual form of communication?

The Sumerians created a visual form of communication to keep track of business transactions. A visual form showed what was being done, since there weren’t written letters like the English language has today.

3. How did the Sumerians “write” records and documents? What medium was utilized?

The Sumerians “wrote” the records using a wet clay tablet and reeds to engrave with. The medium utilized were the clay tablets. First, the Sumerians would wet the tablet and make it a flat surface. Then, they used a wedge-shaped stylus and used the reeds to form impressions into the wet clay surface. The Sumerians then laid the tablet out to dry, creating the permanent engravings in the clay.

4. What is a pictogram? What is the difference between a pictograph/pictogram, and an ideogram?

A pictogram and a pictograph are the same thing, and they fall under the category of an ideogram. Pictographs/pictograms convey meanings to a physical object. Ideograms are graphic symbols that represent concepts or ideas.

Cave paintings are man’s first attempt to communicate with others with symbols and images. It is THE very first form of visual communications! Cave paintings visually inform others in a creative and sophisticated way. Cave paintings are usually beautifully detailed and coloured, and can be found on the inside of cave walls and ceilings.

2. How did prehistoric man create cave paintings?

Prehistoric man created cave paintings by making brushes and paints from various objects. To make the brushes, some materials used were: sticks, leaves, stones, and animal hair. As for the paints, they consisted of mixing together: water, plant juice, charcoal, animal blood, soil, and hematite (a form of iron oxide-the colour of a US penny).

3. Why did prehistoric man create these paintings?

Prehistoric man probably created these paintings to give instructional aid, which helped teach to hunt or techniques used for hunting, to tell a story or review an event that has already happened, and the last possibility was for religious or magical purposes, or for hoping and wishing the image may come true.

4. What is “speleology” ?

Speleology is the scientific study of caves. They study history, structure, make-up, physical properties, how they formed (speleogenisis), change over time (speleomorphology), and life forms found within or outside the caves.

Create an effective poster design on the subject/theme [copyright, plagiarism, fair use, and public domain]. Be sure you communicate your message effectively to the intended audience! Utilize visual organization strategies as a guideline for placement of your images and text. Supporting files should be created in Adobe Illustrator and/or Adobe Photoshop and placed into InDesign to complete the composition. Follow the creative process: first, research, brainstorm, and sketch.

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I received the subject/theme of plagiarism. My image is a pair of glasses, taped together, which appears to be uncool, just like plagiarism. This poster represents how “uncool” it is to plagiarize.

Lorem Ipsum is a filler, or dummy, text used to fill content in pages. Invented in BC 45, Lorem Ipsum was created almost 2000 years ago and is still used to this very day. Lorem Ipsum’s filler text comes from different sections of an ancient text called The Extremes of Good Evil by Roman philosopher, lawyer, statesman and political theorist, Marcus Tullius “Tully” Cicero. It is used to fill content when one needs to see what text will look like on certain web pages or word projects.